Reforged AF - Blocked on Step 1?

[Mordain]

@FaeQueenCory
@The OP
Look, I respect that it's annoying that you have to get Sea access. It is quite boring compared to the old times, where you did CoP with the caps. There's just no fun or accomplishment in stomping a 40-cap mission at level 99, because you can just sneeze in the general direction and win, so I understand the annoyance.

Whoa there! I wasn't the one complaining about getting Sea access! I actually don't mind. I love the CoP story, and this gives me the extra push to finish it off. I guess I can understand the people who are annoyed, but for me the only annoyance was that I wouldn't have figured out why I couldn't reforge my AF without consulting on the forums (i.e., they could have put a disclaimer on the quest or something).

[Ravenmore]

Except that that's a horribly selfish sentiment.
"It only took me one run to get the items I needed, so everyone else better do it in one run or F them."
Some people go 1/1, others go 0/600.
Random drops are bad.
Especially when there's no control over the random drop. (ex of good random: base mythic weapons, any job random, but F100 will drop lead's job weapon every time.)


0_0
People sure do like beating that strawman.
It's a fine paste now.
If not a mist.


Since it seems that neither of you understood my point... which the Devs seem to... because that's why it was done.
And I'm gonna bold it just to make it all noticeable.
Giving more people the capability to get the same tier items in multiple ways allows for more people to play together, and seeing as how this is an MMO, that's kinda the main point to the game being played.

It's not about a time sink. (even though some people delude themselves into thinking that's what people want... though I'm sure ONE person out there surely does...)
It's not about being elitist. (even though that's kinda the stance you make when you drop statements like "I did it in 2m in X way, you should play this MMO EXACTLY like I do"...)
It's about equality and giving more people the ability to be equivalent to each other.


(and Login campaigns are a horrible example of "equal opportunity".... They aren't permanent. They won't be here forever. They don't always offer the same items. Am I right, Zeid?
What about the new player tomorrow? or the one 3mo from now? Or any of the many bajillions of legitimate reasons people might not be able to do the login campaigns?
Basically: stop being selfish. Check yo privilege, not everyone has your resources.)

Really CoP is so freaking easy now a whm/dcn melee could do all the fights and have time to spare in them. So far the only fight that is out of reach for not having the old missions done is the AA fights. ZM is even easier then CoP back at 75 a party of 4 could run though all the missions in 2 days if they pushed it. None of the old content is hard to do solo. Really Airship was made to be fought at 60 cap, now you can go in at 99 with a bunch of easy to get ilvl gear with tons of stats and eva/meva and curb stomp it. Limbus another easy solo and again can do it once a day and tons of wikis out there to tell you exactly which boxes give items or TEs.
But SE did give the option of skipping that step for the cost of more pages, and nothing is stopping you from doing the fights that the pages come from.

And I'm not saying do it the way I did it it, I did all of CoP before the nerfs and know what I would rather had been able to solo the whole deal then deal with all the crap I had to just to keep a group. Also I'm pretty sure you do not have to finish all of CoP to have your af reforged just able to enter limbus so the NPC will talk to you. Really right now content is the fairest it has ever been in FFXI history, I like how it is now and not the BS 1% drop rates but if you look around people are saying left and right how much better the good old 75 days were when seeing how high you could chain little pink birds passed for content.

[Vinedrai]

I can't believe some people here are crying about story related content being a road block on their way to shinies. This is a story driven game, what do you expect? Maybe you should just go play tetris or something, this isn't an arcade game for god's sake. @Crevox, they even handed you limbus items you needed for free (and pages for sparks, though idk if you got them that way), what else do you want? Next thing you will say SE should have added sea access to login rewards.

If anything, people with that mind set should instead be happy that you don't have to endure level caps, slow movement speed, much fewer transportation options and waiting forever to get a party together or the pain to set up a static. But you know what? Despite all that, it was so satisfying to overcome the challenge of CoP, the achievement you felt was amazing after all the sadistic limitations and requirements SE threw at you. It is too bad that newer players won't ever get to experience the same sense of achievement.

SE has already given you up-to date gear options for little to no effort (RoE and skirmish says hello). Don't worry, people won't be pointing fingers at you for not having item level AF while you are running around and beating some battlefields without breaking a sweat and it will only take you a few days... /sigh

[Kensagaku]

Whoa there! I wasn't the one complaining about getting Sea access! I actually don't mind. I love the CoP story, and this gives me the extra push to finish it off. I guess I can understand the people who are annoyed, but for me the only annoyance was that I wouldn't have figured out why I couldn't reforge my AF without consulting on the forums (i.e., they could have put a disclaimer on the quest or something).

My apologies, then! I totally misinterpreted the point of this thread. Then yes, I do agree that it would help if they gave some idea of what is required for these steps, rather than leaving people to guess. There is a train of logic that AF upgrades (+1) comes from unlocking sea access, so further upgrades (109/119) also requires it, but at the same time it would be nicer to have them specify these things a bit more.

[Crevox]

I can't believe some people here are crying about story related content being a road block on their way to shinies. This is a story driven game, what do you expect? Maybe you should just go play tetris or something, this isn't an arcade game for god's sake. @Crevox, they even handed you limbus items you needed for free (and pages for sparks, though idk if you got them that way), what else do you want? Next thing you will say SE should have added sea access to login rewards.

Time. Consuming. None of this is a challenge. I am not "earning" anything. I am running from place to place doing fetch quests. Like I said, I wanted to see the story, and I planned to do it at some point, but I am required to do it now for gear irrelevant to the level of the content. The story is fantastic, but it comes in bits and pieces between the monotony.

The greater majority of my game time has now been running from point A from point B to talk to NPC or beat up too weak to be worth while.

I understand it USED TO BE challenging, but it isn't now. Why are we stuck doing this still? If it's simply for the story, it shouldn't be required for level 99 content. This stuff takes a LOT of time. I could read the entire story script online in less than an hour, but doing this in game takes days. Yes, it is much more enjoyable in game and all that (and honestly, even then I could just watch it all on youtube), but the fact that this is being made a requirement for new content they're pushing out in patches just sucks. I am bearing through going through 4-5 different entire storylines for simple unlock flags that could be flipped on by SE an easier way, but I can't say if my friends will be wanting to do it all too. What's worse is some of it even blocks you from continuing until an earth day has passed (I just started Aht Urhgan, can't continue, gotta wait).

It's no wonder new people don't start playing this game. Not only is all of this extremely time consuming (and often complicated, requiring a guide), but anyone in game and on the forums just says "you guys have it so lucky, it was so hard back in the day, it took so long, quit whining." So friendly, so understanding. I really could care less about back in the day. Stop talking about it, the past is irrelevant to the present.

And for those of you who say it isn't required: it really is. First of all, I can't do any of the AA fights without doing Zilart, apparently. Important gear (sachet) comes from there, and it's the latest content everyone is shouting about, with tons of other things from it too. I can't get my AF+1 without doing CoP, which is very good gear, and for a SMN (me), job specific gear is often critically useful. There's also Alexander and Odin, whom I can't get unless I do Aht Urhgan, and I've already been refused from multiple parties and Linkshells because I do not have Alexander. Lastly, I can't go to Dynamis until I finish the nation missions (just up to rank 6 I think?) and many other things in the game also require rank. There's even more stuff past that, but I can't be bothered to think of it right now (and the more I play, the more things come up).

It's like a gigantic list labeled "Before you can start playing and enjoying the game, first complete this gigantic checklist of fetchquests:"

[Twille]

Time. Consuming. None of this is a challenge. I am not "earning" anything. I am running from place to place doing fetch quests. Like I said, I wanted to see the story, and I planned to do it at some point, but I am required to do it now for gear irrelevant to the level of the content. The story is fantastic, but it comes in bits and pieces between the monotony.

The greater majority of my game time has now been running from point A from point B to talk to NPC or beat up too weak to be worth while.

I understand it USED TO BE challenging, but it isn't now. Why are we stuck doing this still? If it's simply for the story, it shouldn't be required for level 99 content. This stuff takes a LOT of time. I could read the entire story script online in less than an hour, but doing this in game takes days. Yes, it is much more enjoyable in game and all that (and honestly, even then I could just watch it all on youtube), but the fact that this is being made a requirement for new content they're pushing out in patches just sucks. I am bearing through going through 4-5 different entire storylines for simple unlock flags that could be flipped on by SE an easier way, but I can't say if my friends will be wanting to do it all too. What's worse is some of it even blocks you from continuing until an earth day has passed (I just started Aht Urhgan, can't continue, gotta wait).

It's no wonder new people don't start playing this game. Not only is all of this extremely time consuming (and often complicated, requiring a guide), but anyone in game and on the forums just says "you guys have it so lucky, it was so hard back in the day, it took so long, quit whining." So friendly, so understanding. I really could care less about back in the day. Stop talking about it, the past is irrelevant to the present.

And for those of you who say it isn't required: it really is. First of all, I can't do any of the AA fights without doing Zilart, apparently. Important gear (sachet) comes from there, and it's the latest content everyone is shouting about, with tons of other things from it too. I can't get my AF+1 without doing CoP, which is very good gear, and for a SMN (me), job specific gear is often critically useful. There's also Alexander and Odin, whom I can't get unless I do Aht Urhgan, and I've already been refused from multiple parties and Linkshells because I do not have Alexander. Lastly, I can't go to Dynamis until I finish the nation missions (just up to rank 6 I think?) and many other things in the game also require rank. There's even more stuff past that, but I can't be bothered to think of it right now (and the more I play, the more things come up).

It's like a gigantic list labeled "Before you can start playing and enjoying the game, first complete this gigantic checklist of fetchquests:"

So you want to skip past all the actual content of the game and just have the rewards given to you?
Sorry, but this is an MMO, the ultimate time-sink.

[Vinedrai]

Sorry but all I am seeing in your posts is "I want to skip everything so i can get a reward". You are not really making any sense by saying "I can watch all the cutscenes on youtube". You can find full playthroughs and/or video compilations of so many games on youtube. In that sense, nobody should ever play any game you can find on youtube because all the cutscenes and gameplay are already there, so why should we even play it ourselves, right?

I mean, you must be joking (or should I say trolling), because this is too absurd to be true...

[Demonjustin]

In all honesty, why need they be connected though? I can think of no reason that CoP in any way should actually be a requirement, I know that it is and I know its important to do, I fully agree, but if someone wants to complete this content without doing the majority of CoP first, why should we be against that? To me, it seems like a random and pointless requirement in my opinion, just like the VW requirement for unlocking Empyrean WSs was a random needless requirement they just threw at us out of no where.

[Vinedrai]

There has to be requirements for something new added to the game. To progress in Abyssea, you had to have zone boss wins then caturae wins, to progress in VW, you had to kill NMs on your current tier once to get to next tier etc etc. Also, it may sound unrelated to some people (especially newer players) but AF upgrading was always related to CoP.

They could have made it so that you can upgrade your AF with 10 papers without doing any CoP but then they would definitely set a different requirement and don't forget that there is also the option to upgrade them with 5 papers if you already have the hq and you need limbus access to have them so there is still a connection beyond "suck it up and get sea access regardless".

The story justification is that the new NPC is a collegue of the original AF upgrade NPC. It makes sense that the new NPC would only serve you after the original NPC is available to you. The process is technically new and they should be following the timeline. I don't know what else to say if people don't care about stories and chronology. And btw, (this isn't directed at you) asking why ZM progress to fight AA is required is even more pointless because you are not supposed to see them at all before reaching that point in the story.

[detlef]

Complaining about unlockable content that requires missions to access seems to fly in the face of what this game is.

I can't believe you're complaining about having to do Zilart missions to access Ark Angel fights. I can't believe you're complaining that you need to progress in CoP to access Limbus areas and rewards. I can't believe you're complaining about needing Rank 6 in your home nation to do Dynamis. Did you complain about having to do coalitions assignments and Adoulin missions in order to access Wildskeeper Reives too?

How low of a bar do you want?